


Transformation

by wingedScribe



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Beau's is "Fuck Off", Body Dysphoria, Character Study, Everyone is Trans, Gen, Molly's Gender Is Fabulous, Supportive Gang Dynamics, Trans Character, or at least most of them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-31
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2019-03-11 23:09:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13534503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wingedScribe/pseuds/wingedScribe
Summary: Me: I'm not going to get any hard and fast headcanons about the new gang yet-Also Me: Most of the new gang isn't cis and I will die on this hill.Character Studies of Caleb (and Nott), Mollymauk, and Beau and their interactions with gender. Caleb starts practicing magic and ends up a dad. Molly doesn't give a shit about expectations. Beau is ready to fight. Some spoilers through episode 3 of the new campaign.





	Transformation

__

Caleb had been around twelve when he discovered transmutation magic. He’d known he had what they called  _ the talent  _ for a while--not like a sorcerer in the books, who could pull magic out of their blood, not the kind that was chosen by anything greater or higher than themselves, but the simple talent of magic that appeared, occasionally--as if by accident--in the creatures of Exandria. 

 

But he hadn’t given much thought to what school of magic he would go into, what particulars he was interested in. But then, young and sharp, sharper than most his age, with a mind that latched onto words and information like a steel trap--he scanned the pages faster and faster, hoarding the pieces of information like a dragon with jewels, like a cat collected toys behind the back of a couch. 

 

It wasn’t a coincidence that this happened around the same time as the vague feeling of discomfort that had haunted him for years curdled into a lead ball in the pit of his stomach.  _ Turning something into something else.  _ There were spells that did that to humans, he knew. Polymorph, and its cousins. Powerful magic. Something that it would take years to study. 

 

So he started, and in the meantime he did what little things he could. When he couldn’t stand looking in the mirror for one second longer he cut his hair short with a pocketknife, clumps of brown-red falling to the floor like autumn leaves. He nicked his fingers, nicked the back of his neck, and thought that, somehow, this was the least painful bleeding he’d ever encountered. He ignored the creeping knowledge at the back of his brain, the awareness that his mother would be dismayed when she saw him next. He layered himself in oversized coats and pressed the books he carried hard to his chest, a wall between him and everyone else even if they couldn’t quite manage to be a wall between him and his body. 

 

He spent less time with other people, let them pass it off as him being strange or eccentric or shy. He wasn’t brave, wasn’t the kind of person who could bear up under the weight of trying to explain himself to unhearing ears.  It was  _ easier  _ to spend time with his books, which didn’t project anything onto him, and when he flipped the first copper coin into silver between his fingers, the weight in the pit of his stomach lightened, as though it was being transmuted as well. 

 

When, years later, he finds Nott, he knows the signs of someone who hates the shape they’re in, who can’t look in a mirror without wincing. Sure, it’s different from him--he wasn’t a goblin, and he was a boy,  while Nott desperately, desperately isn’t. She pulls her mask up over her face and he thinks of how he pressed his books against himself, the shield they provided. 

 

If he was being honest with himself, he wouldn’t have left her behind even if she hadn’t saved his life. He does what he can, fumblingly braids her hair with hands unused to the motion, and she is beautiful, to him. Her name is right--she’s so brave, walking into cities with him, fearless in a con or in a fight, and the fact that she seems to think the world of _him_ is baffling. 

 

Still, he can’t do enough for her, he feels. Gods, he’s happy he can do  _ anything  _ for her, but he knows nothing about being a girl, just about how not to be one. When they come to Trostenwald that’s one of the things on his mind, how he wants someone who can help Nott figure herself out, to spare her some of the painful, lonely road he walked when he was her age. 

 

Of course, the first people they run into are...ridiculous. Crazy. He winces as Jester opens and shuts all the windows in the tavern with a flare of magic and starts to think that he probably made a mistake. When they get put under police investigation, he’s  _ sure  _ he made a mistake. 

 

But then Jester goes out of her way to help Nott hide, and calls her pretty, and Caleb thinks--well. Sure, this group may be crazy, and he might not trust any of them. But they’re stuck together, for now, and there are better people to be stuck around than a group who batted an eye at neither him nor Nott, who go out of their way to be friendly to them--even if sometimes, he would personally prefer the quiet. 

 

As he’s reading, he overhears Nott’s clearly-gleeful  _ seamen  _ joke and can almost  _ feel  _ Fjord’s exasperation as Jester laughs, as Molly follows-up with an even better-and-worse one. He sneaks a look up from the passage in time to see Fjord walk away from the table, green cheeks clearly flushed, and he can hear Nott’s laughter above the din of the inn.

 

Yeah. There are worse people for him and Nott to be stuck with. 

 

* * *

 

“What’d you want to be called? Name, pronouns?” 

 

The question had startled Molly when Gustav had asked it, although he learned later that he asked it of every new person in the circus, wanting a baseline, alright with whatever answer was given as long as they gave  _ something.  _ Gustav didn’t pry. But you needed to know what to call someone, if you wanted to work with them. 

 

He scrawled his name on the paper in front of him--easier than speaking, when his tongue lay dead in his mouth, so much useless weight.  _ Mollymauk.  _ The proud curl to the y was still there, even if it felt feigned now.  _ Fake it until you make it.  _ A mantra he’d used most of his life. Hopefully, it would work for him again now. He added another line in the same spiky handwriting.  _ He, I guess.  _

 

It didn’t really matter to him one way or the other, he supposed. Certainly  _ he  _ was what other people tended to assume, to say about him, and he didn’t mind that. He wasn’t precisely what people thought of when they pictured a  _ man,  _ maybe, but he also wasn’t what they pictured as a woman, and in all honesty? Those assumptions were based so heavily on humans, on what they thought was normal. 

 

He wasn’t human, and he wasn’t normal. They’d called him a devil, a demon, a monster either for his blood or what he’d done with it. Next to that, pronouns? Didn’t matter, really. Two boxes, both largely irrelevant to actual life and the people living it. 

 

He wore his shirt open to display his scars and tattoo, he helped the twins with their makeup before the show, painted his own eyes with gold and flirted with the male and female patrons, with the ones who were neither. He shuffled through other decks than his own, let the smirk come free whenever he turned over the Devil card and saw the figure on it half-male half-female; he challenged Yasha to a drinking contest (that he, somewhat embarrassingly, lost) and let people assume what they wanted. 

  
  


* * *

 

Beau had to fight for every  _ scrap  _ of respect she could get. It had been infuriating, at home--the looks from the people in town, the disappointment of her parents. They’d wanted a son--she hadn’t been the boy they wanted, hair grown too long, demeanor too stubborn, too insistent on the titles and words she  _ knew  _ she wanted to be called, hearing them fall bitter from her parents’ mouths. But even then, she couldn’t be right--she wasn’t a “normal” girl either, too brash, too ready to fight. 

 

Why couldn’t she just  _ be,  _ she’d demanded one night, anger and alcohol buzzing beneath her veins. Why the  _ fuck  _ did they care so much about all these  _ trappings,  _ all these  _ traps,  _ all this  _ bullshit.  _ Did it actually make them fucking  _ happy,  _ or were they all just miserable, taking it out on her because she refused to be miserable as well? The words flew from her mouth like knives, all the ones she’d pulled out of her own flesh and re-sharpened, hoarded, her own little stash of pain and frustration. 

 

That hadn’t been a good fight. 

 

She’d left, one night with the monk robes and her staff, with a small pack and her clothes draped in blue, the buzz of alcohol through her system giving her a reckless impulsive courage. There was no room in that town for her; not as she was, and she refused to change for them. So, she told herself, this was for the best.

 

She  _ made  _ it be for the best, with stubbornness and determination, and it was true--on the road, people cared less about what to call her, cared more about whether or not she could hold her own in a fight and carry her weight making a campsite. They didn’t ask about the smudged, sloppy makeup from the last time she’d woken up feeling like she wanted to be  _ pretty;  _ they didn’t ask when she forgot to shave, too tired to bother. Still, though--there were looks, there were comments. 

 

With Fjord and Jester, there weren’t, and that was part of why she decided, okay, she could hang with these people for a bit. Caleb and Nott, when she ran into them, also didn’t ask questions, and she could hazard a guess or two why but honestly? It wasn’t any of her fucking business. Jester did her makeup (badly), and fashioned her a false-beard and didn’t laugh  _ too  _ much when she practiced her swagger-walk; Fjord let her try to copy his voice and only winced a  _ little  _ when she slipped up. 

 

Molly--Molly was _irritating,_ and Beau hated herself a little for the reason. Well, the first reason was that he was a dick, and one who seemed determined to rile her up, and there was only so much a monk could handle, right? He was a scammer and a liar and it rubbed her the wrong way. But there was also a hint of admiration and envy under there, digging under her skin at the careless, effortless way he skirted around the boxes she suspected they’d both spent years trying to avoid, the languid ease as he leaned against the table, earrings framing his face. That was the stupid reason, the one that cut at her.

 

But even he didn’t make a comment when she came down the next morning unshaven and with shoddily-outlined eyes, defiantly grabbing a trost and taking a swig, eyes scanning the group and daring them to comment. He just leaned back, sipping at his own drink, and…

 

...alright, if he wasn’t going to be a dick about this--well, he  _ had  _ seriously helped her out, in fights. She waited until the rest of the group was busy looking at something Jester and Nott were doing before kicking lightly at the side of Molly’s leg, doing her best not to glare when he glanced over at her. 

 

“Nice eyeliner,” she admitted, taking a long drink. “You’re still a dick.”

 

Molly laughed, but he half-raised the drink in his hand to her, and she felt her shoulders relax slightly. 

**Author's Note:**

> Some notes: First of all being a Transmutation Wizard is trans culture. Other small notes: Beau in this is genderfluid, preferring she/her pronouns; Molly is nonbinary. Caleb is a man; Nott is a girl. Jester and Fjord might be cis or might not, it's all up in the air. 
> 
> The Devil card Molly refers to--the one depicted as intersex--is from the Marseilles tarot deck.


End file.
